Nat Hentoff has a column in USA Today about the internal struggle for control of the ACLU’s national board going on right now. As I’ve said in the past, I am firmly on the side of the dissidents who have formed SaveTheACLU and tried to remove the current leadership. In a battle between true civil liberties advocates like Ira Glasser and David Goldberger and the current leadership led by Anthony Romero, count me on the side of the former.

Comments

I’m interested in hearing exactly what it is about Romero that members don’t like. Do you know that under Romero, state affiliates have become the focal point of the organization? Until Romero, most “small” affiliates didn’t have attorneys on staff at all. Now every affiliate has funding for a full time staff attorney. That is a huge step in the right direction.

Romero is a great fundraiser. That’s his background, foundation fund raising. But he’s simply not a civil libertarian and never really has been. What he’s done inside the organization, violating the ACLU’s principles over and over again, intimidating those who question his decisions to the point of trying to purge them from the group, is appalling. There is more than enough to justify having him step down on the savetheaclu.org site.